President Trump threatened to bomb Oman if the longtime U.S. defense ally continues brokering a deal with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz without American approval, a warning issued as a 60-day ceasefire with Tehran expired Monday.
During a Fox News interview Monday morning, Trump delivered the blunt ultimatum against a country that has served as a U.S. defense partner since 1980 and helped broker the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal. "If Oman gets in the way, we'll bomb the s*** out of them," Trump told Fox News. The remarks came as Iran and Oman reportedly neared a preliminary agreement to place the strait, a narrow waterway through which one-fifth of the world's oil moves, under joint control.
The threat landed on the same day the U.S.-Iran ceasefire expired with no extension in place. Crude oil sat at $89 a barrel Monday morning. American gas prices hit $4 a gallon. And the broader conflict has already cost 18 U.S. service members their lives, with hundreds more wounded over the past six months.
At the center of Trump's frustration is a negotiating track between Oman and Iran that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz under some form of shared authority. Iran shut the strait after U.S. and Israeli airstrikes in late February, choking off a critical artery for global energy markets. Since then, Tehran has deployed suicide drones, naval mines, and speedboats against U.S.-aligned tankers, and launched ballistic missiles and drones at American military bases and allied Gulf states, including Kuwait.
Trump imposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports to force Tehran back to the negotiating table. His administration's demands are sweeping: Iran must halt uranium enrichment for 20 years, abandon any pursuit of a nuclear weapon, and surrender its entire stockpile of enriched uranium. Tehran's counter-demands include sanctions relief, access to billions in frozen assets, an end to the U.S. blockade, war reparations, and control over the strait itself.
Those two positions remain far apart. AP News reported that both sides were as far apart at the ceasefire's expiration as when talks began, even as Trump claimed the U.S. maintains a back channel for talks with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Into that stalemate stepped Oman, pursuing its own diplomatic track with Tehran. Breitbart reported that Iran and Oman reached an "agreement in principle" for joint control of the strait, with a joint statement expected soon. That arrangement, negotiated without Washington's blessing, is what drew Trump's public warning.
Trump's Fox News remarks were not the first time he put Oman on notice. During a Cabinet meeting in May, the president addressed the question of who would control the strait once it reopened.
"The strait will be open to everybody," Trump said at the time. "Nobody is going to control it... We will watch over it." He then turned specifically to Oman's role in the negotiations:
"It's international waters, and Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we'll have to blow them up. They understand that. They'll be fine."
The day after that Cabinet meeting, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Oman's ambassador had assured him that Muscat had no plans to charge vessels for passing through the strait. The assurance appeared to cool tensions briefly, but the underlying dispute never resolved.
Oman did not publicly respond to Trump's May threat. Whether Muscat has responded to Monday's more pointed warning remains unclear.
The timing of Trump's remarks was not accidental. Iran announced it had reached a preliminary understanding with Gulf states over a transit route map for the Strait of Hormuz, the Washington Examiner reported. Trump, for his part, suggested he might declare the strait U.S. territory, a claim that would represent an extraordinary assertion of American sovereignty over international waters.
On Truth Social, Trump framed the broader confrontation in nuclear terms: "The number one Goal is, and always will be, that Iran cannot have, in any way, shape, or form, a Nuclear Weapon." He characterized Tehran's negotiating posture with characteristic bluntness: "They're good poker players, but they're dying."
The conflict's trajectory has been volatile. Trump called off a planned strike against Iran earlier in the conflict after Tehran and regional allies signaled willingness to negotiate over the Hormuz question and Iran's nuclear program. That diplomatic opening led to the 60-day ceasefire, which has now lapsed.
When the ceasefire broke down in July, Iran attacked commercial vessels in the strait. The U.S. responded with strikes against Iranian radar systems and missile sites along the Persian Gulf. Iran then escalated further, launching ballistic missiles and drones at U.S.-allied Gulf states and targeting American military bases.
The human and economic costs of the standoff are mounting. Eighteen U.S. service members have been killed since the conflict began, and hundreds more have been wounded. American families are paying $4 a gallon at the pump, and global crude prices remain elevated at $89 a barrel, a direct consequence of one-fifth of the world's oil supply sitting behind a closed waterway.
Trump has previously signaled he would respond forcefully to Iranian attacks on U.S. troops, and his administration has oscillated between economic pressure and military escalation throughout the crisis. Earlier this year, the president shifted toward an economic-pressure strategy, conceding that munitions were tight and that no direct talks were underway at that point.
The State Department amplified Trump's posture toward Oman by tweeting a video of his warning, the New York Post reported, signaling official U.S. government backing for the threat rather than treating it as off-the-cuff rhetoric.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, through spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric, offered a different view: "There is no military solution to the conflict." That position carries little weight in a region where the ceasefire just expired, the strait remains closed, and the two principal antagonists have not narrowed the gap between their demands.
Oman occupies an unusual position in the Middle East. The sultanate has been a U.S. defense partner since 1980 and played a quiet but critical role as a mediator between the White House and the Iranian regime for decades. Muscat helped broker the 2015 nuclear deal, the same agreement Trump withdrew from during his first term.
Now Oman is caught between its longstanding American alliance and a neighboring power that controls the other side of the strait. The joint-control proposal with Iran may reflect Muscat's assessment that a diplomatic solution is the only way to reopen the waterway. But from Washington's perspective, any arrangement that gives Tehran a stake in governing the strait rewards the regime that closed it in the first place.
Several questions remain unanswered. What exactly would "joint control" mean in practice, would Iran collect fees, station naval assets, or simply share administrative authority? Has the U.S. communicated its objections to Oman through diplomatic channels beyond Trump's public statements? And what military assets does the U.S. currently have in or near the strait to enforce its blockade?
The answers matter because the ceasefire is gone, the negotiations have stalled, and the president of the United States just told a 46-year ally on live television that it could be next.
When the people making the deals can't tell the difference between an ally and a target, the problem isn't the rhetoric, it's that nobody has solved the underlying crisis, and American service members and American wallets keep paying the price.
